Billing for your dairy and milk shop in Ladakh
Milk by the litre, curd by the bowl and butter by the lump, with the packet count watched all winter.
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What a Ladakh dairy counter keeps on one phone
Low stock warnings
A warning on the packet milk set higher than any other item before the cold, so you hear about it while a truck can still be sent for.
Bills on your phone
One bill for a bowl of curd, half a litre of milk and a lump of butter cut by weight, made before the customer has opened her purse.
Daily reports
The packets sold in each week the road stayed shut last year, read one day at a time. Read together with the count, they show how many days of packets the shop holds.
Why a Leh dairy has curd to sell in July, packets to count in January, and a hotel kitchen that stops in one week
A family that wants village milk for its butter tea and is handed a packet
In the cold weeks the animals give less and fewer cans come down to the shop. A family that has taken the village's milk every morning for the butter tea and the children's breakfast asks for it out of habit, and you have none. You offer the packet, which is not what they wanted. Some go to the next shop, and some stay and take two packets because they do not know when there will be more.
Curd that sets overnight and sours by the third day
Curd is set in bowls at night from the milk that is left, and it is sold by the bowl through the next day. A bowl that goes unsold on the first day is cheaper on the second, and by the third it is sour. How many bowls to set tonight is decided by a feeling about the weather, the buses and the day of the week.
The hotel kitchen that stops ordering in a single week
All summer a hotel kitchen takes milk, curd and butter every morning in large amounts, and you plan round it. When the visitors go it stops in one week, and it does not call, because from its side the season has simply ended. The only sign is the next morning: the cans and bowls you set aside for it are still on the shelf at nine, and you have already bought for a customer who has gone.
From the bowls of curd set at night to the last packet before the road opens
The far coolers and the neighbour's cow when fresh milk runs short
In winter fresh milk runs short, and the coolers are far. Keep the cooler's milk and a neighbour's litres as two items, so in the short weeks the report shows how many days the neighbour's cow carried the shop.
The family asking for fresh milk in January, answered with a day
Add the village's fresh milk with the day each lot arrived written into the name. When a family asks for fresh milk in January, the last lot of that item gives you the day the village last sent some, and the answer is a day and not a shrug.
What to set when the snow is falling
A day of snow keeps the town indoors, and the bowls set the night before are still on the shelf when the third day comes. Write the bowls you set on each snow day, and bill each one sold. After a few snow days the page tells you how few to set when the snow is falling.
Questions Ladakh dairy owners ask about village cans, packets and the winter gap
A customer asks for yak cheese by the kilo. Can I sell it like milk?
Yes. Make yak cheese an item by the kilo with its own rate. What you bought from the villages and what the customers took are then two numbers you can read apart, and the cheese never mixes into the milk count.
A regular buys butter for the morning tea by the lump, not by weight. Can the bill take a lump?
Yes. Add a lump of butter as an item sold by the piece with its own rate, beside the butter sold by weight. The regular's bill says one lump, and the weight item stays for those who ask for it by weight.
Packets keep longer now. How does that change what I hold before the winter road shuts?
Count how many packets the winter takes, and keep that many before the road shuts, so the shelf is not half-stocked when the road is closed. The longer life means a packet bought in autumn is still good in the closed weeks.
A surplus of milk, four coolers and a packet that lasts nine months
Ladakh produces about 16,000 litres of surplus milk a day, but with no pasteurisation facility it faces a winter shortage of fresh and packaged milk. For a dairy shop that is the whole of the year in one sentence: plenty in the warm months, a gap in the cold.
Leh has 4 bulk milk coolers linked to 42 villages within 100 km, and the animal husbandry department plans to export yak cheese and butter. A dairy in Leh sits at the end of those links, and what comes down in a can is what the coolers did not take.
Packaged milk in Leh used to expire when the winter road stayed closed; after talks with Amul, its expiry was extended to up to 9 months. A shop owner still has to know how many packets are on the shelf, because the road can close with the shelf half stocked.